THE CYCLE-CAR.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1787, 27 June 1913, Page 8

THE CYCLE-CAR.

A REVOLUTION IN MOTORING. MINIATURE MACHINES. (By Charles E. Rands in the London "Daily Mail.") I saw tho funniest little microbe of a motor-car the other day scurrying along in the Piccadilly traffic. Alongside tho taxieaba it looked like a steam pinnaco among a ileet of Dreadnoughts. It was tho tiniest littlo waistcoat-pocket edition of a car that might havo come out of o. toy shop, but a perfect little model in every detail made to tho scalo of a Shetland pony in tho Row. It had a little bonnot and the dearest littlo lamps ond horn and liny little mudguards over its little wheels, and it would have been pretty to look at rather than comic if it had not been for tho fact that two grown-up people, a young man and woman, had squeezed into it. They were down among the wheels of tho other traffic in a block by Berkeley Street, aud a facetious drayman looking down from his perch said: "I'll tell baby about you; playing with his birthday present." When the traffic block was released the littlo car scampered away as quickly as any of them. "It will bo quito a car when it grows up." I said to a motoring friend. "Don't laugh at it," ho said, "or you will lie sorry for yourself later on. It is going to grow up fast enough. That littlp thing is going to revolutionise traffic. I.i a very littlo while it will bo tho king of tho road." And ho told me somo things about the cycle-ear that I did not know and had not even suspected. The Man With a Hundred Pounds. When you stop to think about it tho dcmocratisation of tho automobile was sure to come sooner or later. It is only a few years sinco cycling was a fashionablo amusement hopelessly beyond tho means of tho working classes. But it did not take long to democratise the bicycle. Tho country shopgirl's humble means enable her to tako her summer evening excursions on a better-mado bicycle than duchesses r'sed to rido in the days of tho Battersca Park promenade. Tho automobile at first was the costly luxury of the rich. Already it is one of the everyday necessaries of inotor-omnibuses and tho big cars and tho life for the prosperous business man.

And now the evolution of the funny littlo microbe car has suddenly brought the pleasure and tho convenience of motoring within the reach of the moderately well-to-do, tho hundred-pound man. There are hundreds of thousands of them, and before long nine out of ten of them will have a car. It was only in 1910, less than tliTee years ago, that the first little cyclo-car was made. It was just an experiment, and was regarded as a freaJc, but it sold as soon as it was made. The man who made it built another and sold that, and tlien some more and sold them, and then some other makers began to build and to sell, without, however, it being generally recognised tnat anything of importance was nappening until at the motor show at Olympia last Juno it was suddenly discovered that fifty models of these small runabout cars were on exhibition and were selling like hot cakes. To-day there are more than a hundred manufacturers of bantam motor-cars turning. tbem out as fast as they can produce, but not nearly fast enough to meet tho ever-growing demand. Miniature Motor-cars, It is tho development of the light motor-cycle engino that has produced the cyclo-car. Motor-cycling is not everyone's money. It is a trifle too hazardous as a sport and a trifle too muddy as a pastime. The adventurous • young man might disregard its hazards, its vibration, and its muddy ways, but the invention of the side-car intensified its disadvantages by impressing them upon tho mind of tho adventurous young woman. She demanded something with mudguards and conversation and the possibility of attiro' more becoming than hideous yellow overalls. ■So tho highly developed little motor-cycle engine was mouuted on four wheels and called a cycle-car. Now the cycle-cars are developing on the lines rather of a miniature motor-car than of a four-wheeled motor-liscyclo. They are being built with all the mechanical complications of gear-boxes and differentials, live axles, four-cylinder water-cooled engines, and all tho rest of it. Tho word "cycle-car" docs not describe them any longer. They are not, as that word implies, a compromise between a cycle and a car, but a compromise between tho ambition to drive a motor and inability to purchase one. They are not so fast as a motor-cycle with sidecar because they weigh more, but they cau reach fifty miles an hour under favourable conditions, and can easily go thirty miles an hour on the rond. And they can g»et sixty miles travel out of a gallon of petrol, and it costs between three-halfpence and twopcnco a milo to run thorn.

The real working definition of the cyclecar is a hundred-pound motor-car that will go. Everyone I know is cither going to buy one at once or wait a little while beforo buying one. The little car is the now thing, the long-felt want, the. prevailing craze. How the littlo car appeals to the popular imagination I realised when a friend took me for a run in one of them. Everyone turned to look as wo scampered through the streets, and when we stopped a littlo crowd gathered. It cost all told ,£9G 10s., and it went like the wind. It had a littlo hood in caso sf rain, and it was about Bft. long and 4ft. wide, and it held tlio two of us comfortably, and it will go to Brighton and back easily in the day. What more can you wish for than a car that will hold two and go to Brighton and back? If it is big enough to hold two it is big enough for anything. In a little while the roads will be, black with droves of them. The real motoring ago is only just beginning. The littlo car is not only going to revolutionise tho road; it is going to change tho conditions of lite. It is going to take people to live where they can get garage room. Already, in the -outer suburbs builders putting up small liouso property are using odd corners of land for gnrages. Tho. whippet cars take up littlo room, but there will be such multitudes of them that special garago accommodation will havo to bo provided for in all new building schemes, i A Now and Immense Field. They are being sold, I learn, largely upon the instalment plan, like pianos and talking machines, and small house furniture. That brings the motor-car nt onco within reacli of the skilled workman. And tho skilled workman can make ono for himself. In addition to the hundred manufacturers who are turning out cars there are peoplo all over the country of a mechanical turn of mind who, aro purchasing component parts and putting the littlo cars together themselves. Tho bulk of tho. purchasers of cycle-cars aro people who have never driven a motor before or ridden a motor-cycle. The littlo cars havo tapped a new and immense field. In the mechanical Midlands many ladies are driving them already. It means death to tho Suffragette movement, and it will not do lawn tennis any good. Social philosophers point out that Suffrageltism did not set in until tho motorcar had made the roads uncomfortable for pony carts and bicycles. The hundredpound car will restore to thousands of energetic young women of tho middlo classes their lost freedom of the voad. At present the cycle-car is still in the experimental stage. But it has not far to go to develop a working standard of perfection. All tho main experimental engine work has been done for it N by tho big car and the motor-cycle. A standard typo of cycle-car that can bo manufactured wholesale will soon be developed, for an enormous jvholesalo business is waiting to bo done, nnd then tho littlo vehicles will grow cheaper and cheaper. In a year or two wo will bo a nation of motorists, and the rich, if thoy want exclusive enjoyment, will havo to tnko io aeroplaning.